Pakistan: Christian domestic worker killed by Muslim employers

Pakistan (MNN) — On May 6, an impoverished 17-year-old Christian Pakistani girl, serving in domestic work, was killed by her Muslim employer. The reason for the monstrous murder—‘not cleaning properly’.
Teen Killed by Employer
The victim, Kainat Masih, lived in Gujranwala in the Punjab province where she had worked since she was a kid, as a live-in maid for a Muslim family. On the day of her death, her father had come to her employer’s home to visit with her, a rare occurrence in these situations.

The funeral procession for Kainat Masih. (Photo courtesy of FMI)
Upon arrival, her father saw Masih’s arms and legs were being held down by her employer, his wife, two other men, and a woman. Masih was being strangled by a rope tied around her neck. Masih’s helpless father pleaded with these people to not kill his daughter, but to no avail.
The grotesqueness of the situation doesn’t end there. The 17-year-old had been raped by all three of these men. In fact, she had been raped for years by her employer.

Masih’s murder is currently under investigation. No arrests have been made, and none are expected to be since Masih’s employer, Asif Ismail, is the son of a local political party leader, Ismail Gujjar.
“The Christians in Pakistan, for the most part, are a very impoverished community. They’re a sliver of the demographics that make up Pakistan, as a minority. And so they often feel like there’s nothing for them in society,” FMI’s Bruce Allen explains.
“They’re discriminated against in terms of education and therefore in terms of employment. So sometimes having a job as domestic help, a housekeeper, a maid, that’s all that they can think is their lot in life.”
Minorities and Discrimination
Christians are treated as third-class citizens in Pakistani society. In the Muslim majority, there are hardly second thoughts when it comes to beating, raping, and even killing the help for no reason other than disliking them. Since this type of work is almost thought of as a “destiny” for these individuals, many domestic workers accept the sexual exploitation that often comes with it. Stories like Masih’s, which feature the abuse and even death, are not uncommon in Pakistan.

The only requirement for someone entering domestic work is to be an underage girl. Combine this with the fact domestic workers are live-in servants available to the family 24/7, there’s a lot of room for abuse to happen.
“Some of the most recent data that I could find was from the end of 2016, early 2017…more than 12.5 million children in Pakistan are involved in child labor. And if we look at just the number of kids under the age of 10, it’s 6 million,” Allen recalls.
Most of the children who are represented in these statistics come from minority families. Their work, like Masih’s, involves housekeeping duties in Muslim homes and frequent abuse. Allen says what happened to Masih is “the tip of the iceberg as far as the plight for Christian youth in Pakistan.”
Because of the poverty minority families face, parents sell their children as domestic house workers. The act smells of human trafficking– because it is. Oftentimes there is a middleman who brokers the deal. Parents usually do not know who their child is sold to, or where their child will work. For many of these families, selling their kid means one less mouth to feed and they receive their child’s wages.
Mentality Behind Selling Children
Still, how can a Christian family rationalize selling their child into domestic work? Well, just because someone wears a Christian label does not mean there’s a true faith in Christ. Plus, sometimes ‘Christian’ isn’t defined as a follower of Christ. In Pakistan, the term Christian can just mean ‘not Muslim.’ In fact, people in Pakistan are considered to be born into their religion, it’s not a personal faith. Therefore, some Pakistanis ethnically consider themselves Christian.
https://www.mnnonline.org/news/pakis...lim-employers/